246 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



READING IN THE FARM HOME; HOW MAKE IT MOST 



PROFITABLE? 



PROF. A. B. NOBLE, AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 

 [Extracts. ] 



To the thoughtful, reading brings rich rewards; but to many it is little 

 better than an idle pastime, or even a mental dissipation. The benefit 

 is commensurate with the amount of thought called forth, not with the 

 number of pages turned. Whoever wishes to read with most profit, must 

 think; he must think not only while he reads, but must also 



THINK BEFORE READING. 



This he must do in order to guard against injury to character from 

 pernicious reading, such as the details of scandal and crime, so unblush- 

 ingly and constantly thrust before us by the modern newspaper, or the 

 pictures of vice made attractive, as in one class of novels. He must 

 think before he reads, in order to guard against loss of time from read- 

 ing what does not profit, and the consequent loss of opportunity. The 

 repeated loss or waste of opportunities is suflScient to account for many 

 a failure, no less in storing the mind with useful facts than in lining the 

 pocket with dollars. 



AIMLESS READING 



of whatever chances to come to hand, stores the mind with rubbish — 

 facts we do not need and cannot use — and is liable to weaken its original 

 power. What farmer gives bam room to all the rubbish that might be 

 picked up about the place? What reader can afford to give mind room 

 to all the rubbish that may be picked up in reading? 



LISTLESS READING 



breeds a habit which sooner or later will cast its benumbing influence 

 over all our reading, even when we read something of real importance. 

 To derive due benefit from reading, the mind must be alert and vigorous, 

 ready to seize, digest and assimilate, to test and apply, each idea brought 

 forth. 



FRAGMENTARY READING 



is little, if any, better. Though it may not burden the mind with rub- 

 bish, it frequently makes it a mere storehouse of odds and ends, of facts 

 that lack coherence, facts that remain as unconnected as when from a 

 thousand various sources they first came into the mind. To perceive the 

 full significance of facts which come to us one by one, with months or 

 even years intervening, we must bring them into order and system, so 

 that each will fall into its place and be forever after inseparably asso- 

 ciated with all related facts previously gathered. Now the only reading 

 that promotes the formation of this habit is orderly, 



